Geoff Bennett:
Events surrounding America’s 250th birthday produced many memorable images, fireworks lighting up the sky over the Capitol, crowds dressed in red, white, and blue, and military aircraft flying over Washington’s many monuments.
But one set of images has drawn attention for a very different reason. They show hundreds of masked uniformed men marching through parts of Washington on the morning of the Fourth of July. The men are members of Patriot Front. That’s a white supremacist group formed in the aftermath of the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Images of members of the group riding metro trains alongside other passengers have since gone viral.
Amna Nawaz spoke earlier with one of those passengers.
Amna Nawaz:
Roswell Encina on the D.C. Metro, headed to an Independence Day celebration in Maryland on July 4. The ride started out as expected. He saw people dressed in red, white and blue, families getting on and off.
But the atmosphere suddenly shifted when a massive crowd of men, all dressed alike, wearing masks and caps, filled the train. He soon found out those men were members of the white supremacist group the Patriot Front. Getty Images photographer Finn Gomez captured this photo of Encina during that ride.
Roswell Encina heads the U.S. Capitol Historical Society. That’s a nonprofit and nonpartisan educational organization dedicated to preserving the history of the U.S. Capitol, and he joins me now.
Welcome to the “News Hour.” Thanks for being here.
Roswell Encina:
Thank you for having me.
Amna Nawaz:
So take me back to July 4. You’re on this train. You’re headed to a celebration. You notice these men coming on the train, and this photo of you then goes viral. What’s going through your mind at that moment in the picture?
Roswell Encina:
Well, I was scared. I’d be lying to you if I told you — I was trying to be strong.
But when a massive amount of men who are masked covered with sunglasses and a baseball cap, and you can’t identify any of them, your national instinct is to really just like, oh, my goodness, what’s happening? Who are these people? What are their intentions? What are they going to do in the Metro?
So I kind of — kind of made myself smaller.
Amna Nawaz:
When you look at that photo now, what goes through your mind?
Roswell Encina:
I still have a hard time looking at myself in that photo. It’s because people take photographs of you when you’re smiling, when you’re happy, maybe when you’re sad or excited, but you never see yourself when you’re scared.
But I’m really hoping, when people see my photo, most importantly the photo of that African American woman who was also surrounded by them, that they understand that we have our stories too, and our stories are part of the nation, and that we’re all part of this United States.
Amna Nawaz:
There were those other photos, as you mentioned. There was one of a Black man on a Metro train ride also surrounded by members of that Patriot Front, the Black woman who you mentioned, who’s since been identified by her family as Bernita Bowlding.
And I need to ask you about this because, since she was identified, there has been a real wave of some very ugly, some racist comments about her and that photo. Have you seen anything similar? And do you worry about the response now that you’re out speaking publicly about it?
Roswell Encina:
Sadly, yes.
I can’t help but see the comments towards me, the comments towards her, and it’s very discouraging. Some of them are like, well, they didn’t touch him. They left him alone. He wasn’t bullied physically.
It’s hard to understand what a person of color goes through in this country, especially when you’re by yourself in a contained space, and that position you’re put in and not knowing what’s going to happen next. And that’s how we felt.
Amna Nawaz:
Your own personal story is relevant here as well, because you were brought here as an infant. I know your father was in the U.S. military. You’re a U.S. citizen, but you went back and forth between the Philippines a lot growing up.
As we’re talking about America’s 250th and this whole conversation about what it means to be an American, how do you see your story fitting into that?
Roswell Encina:
I think back to when my parents brought me here when I was an infant. My dad was in the U.S. Navy, as you mentioned.
And they have always instilled in me the importance of civic engagement. My father, when I turned 18, we were just — coincidentally we’re in the Philippines then, and like we need to go out and vote. It was 1988. It was a presidential election, and I’m like, oh, sure.
So we drove up to the U.S. Embassy. And I — we voted. And since then, I remember that day very clearly in my head how exciting it was. It’s the most minimum thing you could do is go out and vote. Of course, everything beyond that is public dialogue. And that’s what we try to do, at least at the Capitol Historical Society.
And I think that’s what we need to do more as a nation, is really have more — read more, listen more, talk more, and hopefully it brings us somewhere in the middle.
Amna Nawaz:
Much of your career has been about civic engagement. It’s in your work now. You were at the Library of Congress before that. You know better than anyone the First Amendment protects your right to say what’s on your mind and their right to gather peacefully as they did on that day and say what’s on theirs.
How do you think about that?
Roswell Encina:
It’s very complex. I’m hoping when they — people look at our photos or think back on the Fourth of July in Washington, that it starts a dialogue, it starts a conversation, which is part of democracy.
I really think that really will help us understand each other. We have always had disagreements. However, we have always found a way to move forward. I — there’s been a lot of talk, clearly, because it’s been the Fourth of July, of the Declaration of Independence, and that all men are created equal.
And when you think of that declaration, that Thomas Jefferson wrote 250 years ago, nowadays, it feels more like a mission statement, that I feel like each generation has done their part to try to achieve it, from women’s suffrage, to the 13th Amendment, to landmark legislation like the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, to our LGBTQ rights nowadays.
I think we have all — each generation has played their part to make that a reality.
Amna Nawaz:
Roswell Encina, such a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you so much for being here.
Roswell Encina:
I appreciate it so much.
